Years ago I sat in a room full of middle schoolers and asked them how they felt about helping those in poverty. Expecting them to say that the problem felt overwhelming or that helping made them feel good, I was, instead, met with a quick barrage of reasons not to help those in need:
They won't appreciate it
They spend money on the wrong things
They'll go back to the same old life the next day
They wouldn't need help if they'd just work
Of course, I could hardly blame these middle schoolers. They were voicing what they'd heard spouted by adults, most likely around a dinner table.
Briefly at a loss as to how to respond, I recovered and asked them what would happen if God withheld His grace using the same reasoning.
They wouldn't need help if they'd just work
They'll go back to the same old life the next day
They spend money on the wrong things
They won't appreciate it
Now, I know that helping those in need is a complicated issue and that handing a guy on the street a couple of bucks can be as much about avoiding the issue as actually helping, but it concerns me how many of us are still looking for any excuse not to help. Our money is hard earned, our time is precious, our resources and what we do with them is no ones business but ours.
Me and my fellow Christians can be the worst of the bunch. We embrace the pursuit of happiness as if it were a part of our own story and not one handed to us by others. We cling to what it ours, say things like "honest work for honest pay", and accuse those in need of being lazy or con-artists or out and out thieves.
But the Bible takes an interesting view on theft. In the Old Testament, God's people not only viewed taking from others as theft, they viewed withholding from others as theft.
This is echoed throughout Jesus' teaching and the New Testament as a whole. John the Baptist says in Luke 3:11, "The man with two coats should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same."
I'm tired of hearing that this kind of teaching is communism or socialism, just because it isn't capitalism. The fact is that this kind of sharing is simply Christian. It is the understanding that if I have two coats and you have no coat, I have your coat.
And I should give it back to you.
4 comments:
Never heard anyone say that free citizens giving voluntarily to help the needy was socialism or communism.
Maybe not put that way, I haven't. But I'm amazed by the number of times that the mere mention of pooled resources (as seen in Acts) is dismissed as socialism and, therefore, as bad.
I believe it was the obligation to help the needy that is often dismissed as socialism or communism, which it would be if it were required by the government. But since it is an obligation laid on us by the God who gave us everything we have by grace, it is simply doing what is expected of us. God doesn't offer us the option to care for the poor (the very definition of charity), he commands it.
Thank you Sarah. That is it exactly. Too often, Christians think that whether they give is no more God or the church's business than the government's. And that simply is not so.
Post a Comment